


Blue Christmas

by Rhinozilla



Category: The Walking Dead
Genre: F/M, awkward lovebirds being awkward, kinda angsty in parts, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 07:20:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9167962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhinozilla/pseuds/Rhinozilla
Summary: Daryl abided by her request to be left alone for two months. Maybe that time has changed both their minds. Anonymous prompt from Tumblr based on "Blue Christmas" cover by the Lumineers.





	

Time north of the Mason-Dixon Line was teaching Daryl that landscape seemed to transform under snow. This wasn’t the first heavy snow that he’d seen since leaving Georgia, but it was the first one he’d had be to out in for a long period of time.

Gauging how much the horse’s legs were sinking into the white powder, it was at least six inches and rising. The flakes drifting through the air seemed to be the size of nickels, catching on the horse’s mane in front of him and collecting on his clothes. The long ride had given the cold time to seep through his clothes and prickle at his skin. Between that and the time riding the horse, he could feel his joints locking up just as Carol’s house came into view down the road.

He had abided by her request to be left alone for two months. Some days, it was enough to know that she was safe and alive and taking care of herself, that he knew where she was and that she was more than capable. Other days…any time he thought about her, he remembered what Hershel used to say about having a ‘phantom limb,’ like part of you was missing, but sometimes your brain forgot. He used to say he could ‘wiggle’ his long gone toes and he felt his leg itching where there wasn’t a leg anymore.

Carol was a phantom limb that way. Daryl could wake up and smell her in the air, could swear he heard her voice when the breeze drifted through some wind chimes. The idea to mention something to her would pop into his head before he remembered that she wasn’t just in the other room.

The horse changed gait and snorted a bit, and Daryl glanced over to what had spooked it. The walker was alone, and its legs looked to be frozen solid. It was trying to walk, though it was leaning heavily on the road guard rail, leaving a stark red-black trail where the rail was cutting into it.

Daryl tugged on the reins a bit, guiding the horse back on track. “G’on. Ain’t gonna getcha.”

His words were accompanied by a huff of foggy breath, and he sniffed once. The horse ambled on, leaving the walker far behind, and Carol’s house drew closer. He reached the front gates just as the front door was opening.

Carol stepped out, wrapped up in a thick, patterned blue quilt and squinting through the snowfall. Warmth pushed out from his core at the sight of her, and his chest went thick with relief and something close to homesickness. He couldn’t read her expression from this distance, and he looked away as he dismounted the horse.

Good God, his thighs were killing him. He gingerly bent his knees a few times to loosen things up and get the blood flowing again. He looped the reins around the top of the gate and then paused. Carol was staring at him. There was nothing hostile about her posture, like she hadn’t made up her mind about him being there yet.

The horse nudged its nose against the middle of his back, and Daryl snorted despite himself, giving its ear a scratch.

“Yeah, okay, jerk.”

Bracing himself, he pushed open the gate and stepped onto her property. The snow was just as thick in her yard and across her walkway as it was out on the road. Looked like she’d been holing up and not getting out. That was probably for the best.

They kept their eyes on each other as she waited for him to reach the steps to the porch. Once there, he stayed on the path, not coming up to her, but waiting for…permission? Hell, he’d already defied her request by coming all the way here. Now that she was just a few feet away though, he started to feel like he was choking.

She’d been clear back then. Leave me alone. I don’t want to see any of you. I don’t want to be involved. And he’d believed that she believed that, but the look in her eyes now was that of someone who had been doing the “alone” thing for two months now…and wasn’t finding the peace that maybe she’d hoped to. She was still hurting, and they both knew by now that isolating herself wasn’t dulling that hurt.

The glare from the snow made him squint one eye, and he shook his head to brush his bangs aside, giving him a clearer look at her.

“You’re full of shit,” he stated in greeting.

Carol continued to stare at him for a long moment. She looked past him to the snowy road, sighed, and then looked at him again. “Yeah.”

The corner of his lips quirked up at that.

She looked away, toward the woods. “You come all this way to tell me that?”

“That and…” he paused, shoving his freezing hands in his pockets. “I’m full of shit too, sayin’ I could just let you be like this.” He lifted his shoulders. “I cain’t.”

Carol shifted her arms under her quilt, lowering her chin against the breeze. “So now what?”

Daryl swallowed and dug deep for that rapport that used to flow so easily between them, dormant for too long. “Think this is where you invite me in, and we talk.”

Carol snorted, a genuine shimmer of amusement in her eyes. “Okay.”

His heart leapt in his chest. Baby steps. He’d take ‘em. Lord knows how many baby steps she’d taken with him over the years.

He ducked his head and came up the steps. She didn’t back up to give him room, so he ended up standing close enough for the fog of her breath to touch his coat. He looked down at her and waited until she lifted her eyes to meet his gaze.

“I missed you. Still do,” he confessed.

One of her hands reached out from under the quilt then, coming up and grasping his shoulder. It was the worst off of him, probably never would be like it was before taking that bullet. She squeezed hard enough to compress the layers of his jacket, until she could feel the solid mass of his muscle and bone there. Real, tangible. She pursed her lips and looked up at him.

“Me too,” she murmured. “Let’s go inside.”

He smiled as she turned around to lead him in.

“Y’got a nice set up here, but somebody needs to shovel your driveway.”

She scoffed and threw a sheepish grin back at him. “Stop.”

Daryl watched her as she walked inside ahead of him. “Never.”


End file.
